Production Note: We welcome Lead Character Designer Chi Duong in to chat with us for the first time this season. She will be here a little after 12PM ET. Please DO NOT direct all your Redeemer paddle questions @Chi.

I was going to mention something about the coincidental timeliness of The Pope/Vatican storyline, but I think we’re all more interested in agent Pam learning foreign languages on an overseas flight like the gayest X-Man. It’s still unclear as to whether Pam-in-the-field will be a recurring thing but there’s no denying it was fun. We might just have to have Amber Nash drop by to chat about it.

Anyhoo, the penultimate episode of Season 4 gave us a lot of gorgeous artwork of Rome and as much Woodhouse as we’ve seen all season. Did George Coe sound different to anyone else? Maybe it’s all the spiderweb consumption. Some notes before we get to some jazz hand-y GIFs.

Finding new and interesting ways to feature Lana’s man hands will never not make me happy.

Do you guys think sometimes Ron Lieberman just tags along with Jessica Walter to her voice recording sessions so they just find ways to add him in? I don’t think I actually want to know the answer.

Am I the only one equal parts oddly touched and distressed about Archer’s concern for Lana lately? I’m conflicted. Not as conflicted as Gambit though. Chet pointed out to me that Rogue is the perfect beard when he sent this GIF over. I concur, confirming that both Chet and I did not date in high school.

Chet Manley GIFs on the page as to not crash too many browsers. Welcome Chi! We’ll be nice! Swear!

Seriously, the guys at Frisky Dingo are crazy good animators.. and know they are just showing off. It’s getting to the point where it’s not an Archer episode unless there’s a car chase, and the car knocks over some cans/fruit/whatever, and it looks fucking amazing.

Not at all. I know that even the worst character designs are designed by SOMEONE. It was sarcasm. Because, in my opinion, Archer’s character designs are terrible. They’re like those old paper cut-outs of people in underwear that girls would put dresses and different outfits on. Just generic as hell. To me there’s no artistry in that shit.

Just got home from the most recent Archer Live in NYC, and man, without giving anything away that hasn’t already been said, the finale looks AWESOME. The only negative is that we’re already at the finale. Womp womp.

@Chi – Last week TJ told us that you use Illustrator to draw the characters. Any tips for an artist who can’t seem to get decent line widths in his work? Any brushes you’d recommend? Do you use the pencil tool? The pen tool? I adore your work on Archer and would love to learn anything you can tell us.

We use the pen tool, but I sketch the designs in Photoshop. The pen tool will be your best friend in Illustrator, but for PS, I just use a regular brush that is pressure sensitive. It just takes a lot of practice and drawing, redrawing, and more redrawing. Confident lines always make the drawing.

Our Illustration Department is actually REALLY on it, so there rarely is a time when I’m needed to help out. Its more often that I’ve missed something minor, so I need to go back and design something real quick for them. And we all work in a stagger, so by the time I finish designs for an episode, there’s usually a script ready for the next one for us to start working on.

Pam was actually designed in Season 1, and I was just an illustrator then, so I didn’t get to design her. But as far as drawing bigger gals, you just have to look at it like if you were designing for different sizes. Clothes fit all sorts of people differently, so its something I constantly keep in mind when designing.

Funny enough, in the fightclub scene with the fish fighting, the man that I’m yelling at is modeled after my dad. We’ve had a lot of other people model for us here though, Adam, the lead illustrator was Chet and Reggie Thistleton, Ray and Yusuke, two animators, was the North Koreans, etc etc. We usually draw people in as drones.

They guy who was prone in that final scene is often standing there reading the paper. There’s a younger black guy, and an older white guy in all the establishing shots of the ISIS building. I took it as he was just relaxing, but one of the FLoyd Co. guests stated a while back (on this UPROXX forum) that those loiterers actually come into play at some point. I took that to mean they are KGB agents. Spys watching the spys.